NSA to Wikileaks: 404 Page Not Found

By now it should be clear that Wikileaks and its slithery founder Julian Assange exist explicitly to hurt and embarrass the United States – not that the U.S. doesn’t deserve some reprobation for its decidedly covert, undemocratic actions. But the selectivity with which Wikileaks treats the material it publicizes demonstrates its egregious bias. Maybe Wikileaks started out with grandiose goals to speak truth to power, but it’s now really nothing more than diplomacy’s version of TMZ.

Virtually every high-profile Wikileaks release contains damaging info about no country other than America. And during the 2016 presidential election, are we really to believe that the Democrat’s servers were eminently hackable while the Republicans were impenetrable? That there was no lowly and disgruntled GOP underling willing to disgorge some fugly facts about Huckabee’s eating habits, Santorum’s sexual deviancies, Carly Fiorina’s gender, Jeb Bush’s favorite brand of white bread, or Trump’s taxes and/or the secret to his cantilevered hairdo? Obviously, Assange – who hates Hillary Clinton – decided to dribble out damaging info (most likely with assistance on timing from Trump insiders) to tilt the election against her. (Trump’s sentiment last Fall: “I love Wikileaks.” Indeed.)

The salient question: why won’t the NSA or the CIA (two top U.S. cyber agencies exposed and insulted by Wikileaks) take down the organization’s ability to operate? I can’t believe it’s for a lack of ability – after all, the two agencies should be capable of running roughshod over a ragtag bunch like Wikileaks after slurping up tens of billions of taxpayer dollars every year.

C’mon spooks – get mad. Take down this Ecuadorean Embassy squatter, send him back to Sweden, and force feed him lutefisk until he reveals the other half of the Wikileaks’ treasure trove – including the video of Trump and his golden shower party.

King of Pork meets the Art of the Eel

Right after Trump recited his speech from the Teleprompter to Congress without going postal or breaking off to tweet scorn over some Hollywood b-lister’s crappy ratings, Mississippi Senator Thad “King of Pork” Cochran issued a statement : “I appreciate President Trump for his enthusiasm and energy to lead our nation. He has presented an ambitious agenda to keep our country safe, to improve the economy, and to make the federal government work more efficiently for its citizens.”

Now, in a move that makes as much sense as removing the lock on your back door so you can have two locks on the front door, Trump has proposed major cuts to the Coast Guard and the TSA so he can scrounge up enough scratch to pay for more border patrollers and 2,000 miles worth of masonry.

First in line to call foul? Thad the Cockroach. As the leader of the Senate appropriations committee in 2015, Thad was successful in pushing through a deal to spend $600 million for a new Coast Guard cutter to be built in, yeah, Mississippi. Trump’s new order calls for the cutter’s cancellation. Uh oh.

Maybe Thad can get some leftover “beautiful wall” bricks sent over to build some more museums in, yeah, Mississippi.

Media Never Learns

On the front page of today’s New York Times under the headline “After Halting Start, Trump Plunges Into Effort to Repeal Health Law:”

“President Trump, after a halting start, is now marshaling the full power of his office to win over holdout conservatives and waffling senators to support the House Republicans’ replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Trump is deploying the salesman tactics he sharpened over several decades in New York real estate. His pitch: He is fully behind the bill to scotch President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, but he is open to negotiations on the details. In so doing, Mr. Trump is plunging personally into his first major legislative fight, getting behind a bill that has been denounced by many health care providers and scorned by his base on the right. If it fails, Mr. Trump will find it difficult not to shoulder some of the blame.”

Mr. Trump will find it difficult not to shoulder some of the blame. Are you kidding???

Will the Times and the rest of regular journalism ever get smart? For decades it’s been Gospel According to Don that Trump never, ever, ever takes the blame for anything. Ever! Events like bankruptcies, court-ordered judgments, billion dollar losses, and picking a guy like Mike Flynn to be National Security Advisor would normally be considered failures, but in Trumpworld, they’re spun into glorious illustrations of his majesty’s brilliance. When a Navy Seal was recently killed in a raid in Yemen, Trump was quick to blame “the generals” instead of “shouldering” some of the responsibility for green-lighting the mission. That’s the way Trump rolls – and always will be.

If the Republican’s new Obamacare replacement shits the bed – as is likely given that it will be shown to raise the deficit thus allowing the Dems to filibuster – don’t expect Trump to shoulder a goddamned thing. He’ll be the first to gin up and tweet out a new phony scandal (time to bring back Anthony Weiner?) that outlets like the New York Times and CNN will follow dutifully into the rabbit hole, leaving Trump shoulder-free to take on the next non-problem facing the country.